He trudged slowly through pitch-black darkness where not even a speck of light could penetrate, for what felt like ages.
"...This place hasn't changed a bit from back then or now."
After fumbling deep into the cavern, Gwang-il finally reached a chamber about five feet wide, embedded with a single fragment of a night-luminescent pearl.
In the corner stood a large, lidded earthenware crock.
Beside it was a small spring, half a foot across, serving as his water source.
"Talk about spartan."
The chamber's layout matched his memories perfectly, down to the smallest detail, drawing an involuntary, delighted chuckle from Gwang-il.
"This place embodies the true history of our sect."
This abandoned seclusion cave, once frequently used in ancient times, had long been forsaken due to its various inconveniences.
No one had visited since his master's generation, following the era of the sect leader who was his grandmaster—what more was there to say?
He had ended up here in the past because the Beast Palace fiends had burned every last building of the sect to the ground, hadn't they?
Desperate to find even one remnant of the sect's atmosphere, he had wandered the mountains day and night and stumbled upon this spot.
And then...
"It was a bizarre stroke of coincidence that led me to the hidden chamber."
He had come seeking the sect's lost essence, only to be greeted by that crock and the spring mouth.
As he turned to leave, overcome by emptiness, he had mindlessly dived into the spring—as if drawn by some force—and that marked the beginning of all the fateful opportunities that turned him into the Dark Heaven Emperor.
The tiny spring mouth connected to a long waterway cascading down Mount Point Cang.
Swim sinuously through it, and one could reach the arrangements left by the founding ancestor.
The problem was...
"Not sure if my current level has the lung capacity for it."
The path from this seclusion cave to the hidden chamber was quite a distance.
About an hour of nonstop swimming through passages longer than that.
With internal energy and lung endurance at merely first-rate level, success was uncertain, to say the least.
Last time, he had arrived at transcendent peak and made it without issue, but now, without luck, he might drown midway.
Thus, he needed thorough preparation and meticulous planning.
"All the martial arts are in my head anyway. I just need the 'Point Cang' sword and the Azure Spirit Oil. Grab those and I'm done."
The incredibly sturdy narrow-tip sword, Point Cang, left behind by the founding ancestor—its material still unknown even now.
A divine weapon that didn't yield an inch against peers forged from millennium cold iron, and his cherished blade from his past life.
Of course, Point Cang wasn't its original name.
When he first acquired it, there was no name inscribed, so he had whimsically given it the cherished name he held in his heart.
To never forget the sect that had been reduced to ashes and vanished into the annals of history.
Infused with his dream and will to one day rebuild it, the Point Cang Sword became a symbol of death and terror embodying the Dark Heaven Emperor.
"It'll be no different this time. Meeting it twenty years earlier than before—shouldn't that be even better?"
Excited at the thought of reuniting with his beloved sword, he strode toward the spring without thinking.
But only for a moment.
"...Damn it all."
Only upon reaching the spring did he suddenly realize his buttocks were a mangled mess.
And with that came a flood of practical problems resurfacing.
"Tch!"
Gwang-il had no choice but to forcibly suppress the boiling desire surging within him.
"First, I need to toughen this body enough not to become a water ghost on the way to the hidden chamber."
And wait for this embarrassingly wrecked rear to heal, too.
He had originally planned to visit the seclusion cave after completing all those preliminaries.
But during his talk with his master, swept up in the mood, he had impulsively come here, hadn't he?
"No helping it."
Turning back now to treat his buttocks would make him look utterly pathetic—what kind of Dark Heaven Emperor would do that?
"What age am I again this year...?"
Tch, tch!
Still struggling to adjust to the reality of his youthful inexperience, Gwang-il thus began his intensive training in the seclusion cave.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
The training progressed smoothly beyond expectation.
Including restoring the bruised rainbow of colors on his buttocks.
"Master gave me some top-notch golden sore medicine."
Come to think of it, the sect's finances were quite comfortable.
The finest teas in the world were mostly grown in Yunnan, after all.
And the Point Cang Sword Sect owned vast tea fields, practically making it a major landlord.
"One of the famed Nine Great Sects, with world-class martial arts, and finances this prosperous—yet even entry tests are lax. I can't fathom why recruiting disciples is so hard."
Even combining all third-generation disciples like himself, there were barely two hundred.
Considering over half would leave for secular life and descend the mountain, it was laughably pathetic in terms of manpower.
"Shaolin, Wudang, even those idiots from Huashan have over three hundred core disciples per generation...!"
What the hell made our Point Cang inferior to those scum!
Venting his rising irritation with a stream of grumbles for a while...
"...No. I need to think differently. From now on, I have to crack down hard so not a single third-generation disciple goes secular."
To do that, naturally, he needed martial arts so powerful they'd make desires overflow and bind them.
Gwang-il lacked confidence.
Confidence in succeeding.
"At this point, I should at least be able to reach the hidden chamber."
He had devoted the past full month solely to internal energy cultivation and physical conditioning, training like a madman.
Sleeping only two hours a day, making up the deficit with meditative breathing.
With only ten limited years constantly ticking away, he had no choice but to push so relentlessly.
From overhauling the sect from the ground up, to traveling south of the Yangtze—including Guizhou—to regather his old retainers.
Apart from recovering his past life's Dark Heaven Emperor martial prowess, there were simply too many external tasks.
And ones no one else could do for him, at that.
"Should I start by meeting the beggar and Moonlight?"
The Beggars' Sect's Dragon Head Division Leader, with whom relations hadn't soured even amid the righteous-evil war.
And the Shadow Gate's leader, one of his closest retainers.
These two had tirelessly warned of the Western Outer Evil Palaces' dangers, running themselves ragged to prevent the righteous-evil war.
"The beggar will make a name somewhere eventually... but Moonlight's the issue."
Hangzhou's top courtesan who rose to Shadow Gate leader—an unparalleled woman—but this was over twenty years before he first met her.
"...Hoo! What a pain in the ass pile of tasks. Hye-jong, you damn bald monk. You knew this would happen and sent me back instead of yourself."
Haa...!
He wondered if a day would ever come when he could sleep soundly again.
"Focus on what's in front of me first. Handle them one by one. One at a time."
That was the Dark Heaven Emperor's way.
"Hoo."
Splash!
Without hesitation, Gwang-il dove into the spring and swiftly cut through the current like a determined carp.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
"Puhah-!"
Ugh!
His trembling body hauled itself desperately out of the water, sprawling flat on the icy stone floor.
"Hahk! Hak! Haahk! Haaaah-!"
He had swallowed so much water his lower belly bloated, and he could feel it sloshing nauseatingly below his Adam's apple.
Despite ample preparation based on past experience, the sole reason for this miserable state was one.
"Damn it! I forgot about eyesight...!"
In the pitch-dark underwater, a mere first-rate martial artist's pitiful vision couldn't discern a thing.
Even at peak level, such trivial annoyances vanished entirely.
Having lived at higher levels for nearly thirty years, it hadn't even crossed his mind.
"I keep forgetting how pathetically ant-like I was at this young age."
Hooo...
Mingling self-deprecating irritation with a long sigh, he exhaled.
Quickly steadying his ragged breath, Gwang-il stealthily rose to his feet.
He had thrashed about wildly underwater searching for the hidden chamber entrance, but he had reached it nonetheless.
"That's what matters."
No matter how many failures, achieving the goal was all that counted.
"Isn't that right, Founding Ancestor?"
The space was adorned with countless night pearls on the ceiling, incomparably grander than the seclusion cave.
Toward the emaciated elder seated in lotus position at its end, Gwang-il offered a deep bow brimming with utmost reverence.
"This unworthy disciple has returned this long, arduous path once more to seek your aid."
Not merely referring to the recent swim through the spring.
He confessed how, through Shaolin's miraculous relic, he had incredulously returned to the past.
"In my previous life, I wasted time fighting those Murim Alliance fools and couldn't even properly avenge the sect. Thus..."
Slowly rising to stand tall, flames of fierce resolve blazed in Gwang-il's eyes.
"This time, I'll ensure those Southern Barbarian beasts can't even set foot on our mountain."
The elder remained utterly silent, offering no response to his words.
But Gwang-il paid it no mind, steadfastly pouring out what he needed to say.
"I swear here and now: I will protect the Point Cang name and utterly eradicate from this world everything that dares threaten our sect."
The blood-oath declaration he had once wept out in this very spot.
Perhaps because he had failed to uphold it?
His voice trembled faintly, laced with unease, as he renewed the vow.
"Thus, shamelessly... shamelessly, I earnestly beg you one more time... grant this disciple another chance."
As expected, no reply came this time either.
But it didn't matter.
The oath to the founding ancestor was, after all, one to himself.
"...Hoo."
Striding forward, he gathered the narrow-tip sword neatly placed before the elder and the wooden box beside it.
Backing away respectfully, Gwang-il sat in lotus position facing the elder directly.
Without hesitation, he opened the box, uncorked the small porcelain vial inside, and poured it straight into his mouth.
The result of these seamless actions manifested swiftly: his body enveloped in a soft, milky white glow.
As Gwang-il entered a trance, fervently striving to approach his past prowess...
"..."
The elder's tightly shut lips curved into the faintest, illusory smile.
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